U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa: Cold War to Reagan

Introduction: The Cold War Framework and Southern Africa

The United States' foreign policy toward Southern Africa has long been caught between the Cold War paradigm and hasty decisions driven by self-interest. In her treatise on American engagement with Africa's southern region, Helen Purkitt aptly described the "tilt" toward South Africa that began in the 1970s and continued under the Reagan administration. "The characteristic decision-making process toward the region was aptly summarized," she wrote, "in the comprehensive policy review on U.S. foreign policy initiated by Kissinger during the early Nixon administration as being ad hoc and based on momentary costs and benefits." The earliest interactions between the Southern African states and the United States were shaped by an American philosophy wedded to the status quo but defined by the ongoing battle with communism abroad — a philosophy often seamlessly attached to the cause of freedom fighters and native liberators across the globe. Nowhere were these tensions more evident than in American policy toward South Africa, Namibia, and the Angolan Civil War.

Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States largely played a secondary role in the international dimensions of African political development, stepping aside for Britain and its European peers to address their former colonies as those nations moved through their final stages of independence. While the actual attainment of the freedoms for which Africans fought lay far on the horizon, the bloody warfare that burned the nebulous concept of "liberty" into the African South was very much on the minds of political leaders far beyond the confines of local tensions.

Real conversation about the developing "African Problem" began in Washington during Eisenhower's second term (1957–1961), when the National Security Council developed a proposal for the division of labor in the developing world. Notably, the United States would assume umbrella control for the Latin American region, while Europe would serve as the satellite leader for post-colonial Africa. The real policy, however, was well woven into the social conversation written between the lines. As Purkitt observed, since many of the objectives were contradictory, the pursuit of one or more goals often made it difficult to pursue others. The resulting U.S. policies were frequently inconsistent or self-contradictory. This paternalistic hierarchy set the stage for the covert operations, ensuing confusion, and nefarious complications that would characterize U.S. foreign policy toward Africa in the coming years.

Early U.S. Engagement with Africa: Eisenhower to Nixon

While ostensibly the African prospect — replete with brewing racial concerns and potential economic value — was left to European stewardship, the United States had already witnessed a long history of being drawn into the continent. "As far back as the beginning of World War II, the U.S. has been drawn to Africa by non-African imperatives." First the Nazi occupation of Europe, then the availability of nuclear materials from the Belgian Congo, and then the Axis occupation of Ethiopia — in each case, the United States found a foreign stake in Africa. After the first wave of decolonization in 1956, Cold War politics and post-war idealism drew the U.S. back once more.

Thanks in large part to then-Vice President Richard Nixon, the U.S. decided to place an American Embassy in every independent African country, motivated largely by fear of communist takeovers in many of the fragile, newly independent nations. At the same time, Wilsonian idealism required that those emerging African nations receive U.S. assistance for development. The resulting policy fit comfortably within the public ideology of containment and appeals to promote national interests abroad, serving largely as "adequate justifications for U.S. foreign policy in the region to a largely uninterested American public." Nevertheless, the conflicting ideals at the heart of Washington's earliest approach to South Africa and its greater region were already well established by the time Reagan appeared on the national political scene.

The next two decades were filled by the collapse of the Congo, the first United Nations peacekeeping mission into the region led by the U.S., and the height of the Cold War. The Nixon-Brezhnev détente notably played out in Africa — in Addis Ababa in 1971, the same script that would later define the "Reagan Doctrine" in the South was first officially drafted. While the years between Nixon's early approach to Africa and Reagan's tenure appeared relatively calm, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan forced Jimmy Carter to reanalyze the status quo and reconsider the strategic capital Africa offered in the ongoing struggle against communism, first made clear in Angola.

Reagan assumed office as U.S. diplomatic and military forces sought base rights, facilities, and transit authorizations throughout East Africa, extending the American presence from Somalia to Kenya. At the same time, three political parties were coalescing to the south, where in Portuguese West Africa the European colonizers had refused peaceful decolonization and a bloody fourteen-year independence guerrilla war had ensued. Fighting for freedom, the three emerging native forces were the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a mixed-race movement linked to the Eastern Bloc; the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), an ethnic Bakongo force tied to Mobutu in Zaire and supported by the United States; and the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), steered by Jonas Malheiro Savimbi from the cultural enclave and power base of Angola's hinterland.

Angola and the Collapse of a Coherent U.S. Policy

When Angola gained independence in 1975, it was the Marxist-inspired MPLA that attained control. The MPLA was supported by the Soviet Union, drawing intense U.S. concern and further military pressure from FNLA and UNITA. The Americans were immediately drawn in. Kissinger had too long ignored the turbulent social conditions in Angola in favor of intense involvement in South Africa, where NSC Study Memorandum 39 had established a clear line of policy for the Nixon administration to adopt. While concerns to the south and far north occupied Oval Office conversations, the lack of attention paid to Angola and the rest of the region became abundantly clear as a massive policy failure.

"The failure of a comprehensive U.S. policy review in the early 1970s to anticipate changes in the Southern African region at one level is not surprising. Henry Kissinger, as the architect of Nixon's foreign policy, had ordered this review to justify closer cooperation with South Africa while choosing to ignore the realities of policies in Angola and throughout the region." Bender reported that it was this failure, at its heart, that proved to be the most fundamental flaw in American policy toward the region — resulting in a "commitment to losing sides" and, at the same time, granting the Soviet Union an undesirable strategic advantage.

The broader ideological and material stakes were also clear. The Southern African region offered a wide range of strategic opportunities for American interests that were self-evident: maintaining a foothold in the region served not only the Cold War political script but also secured fast access to key strategic minerals — uranium prominent among them — highly desirable to the United States and feared in the hands of the Communist Bloc. Despite disagreements among America's governmental elite and gaps in the official argument, the fundamental dynamics of the Angolan conflict erupted into a series of decisions that led to covert-aid missions intended to reaffirm Washington's geopolitical position. "Thus, covert programs and gaps between the principles espoused in rhetoric and specific policies are common means to pursue policies that are in direct conflict with the belief components of the official script."